I can't believe that people are still throwing around the story that Tom Cummins raped and killed his cousins. Anyon who has thoroughly examined the facts cannot conclude that he did it, and the ridiculous "scenario" made up in this post seems more defense-attorney boilerplate than reasonable alternate version.

I am fully opposed to the death penalty for Marlin Gray, but I am responsible enough to say that without engaging in a evival of the witchhunt against Tom Cummins (which was devised by a white conservate police officer to begin with -- but that doesn't fit the easy story Gray's lily-white, money-hungry lawyers have pushed). Perhaps Gray is innocent, but that does not make Cummins guilty (or vice versa). As activists, why would we engage in the polarized logic of the legal system that is going to kill Gray?

The statement that Cummins failed a polygraph test is incredibly offensive given how many truly innocent people fail them, and how reliance on polygraphs has been used against the oppressed. Why should activists support the polygraph test results here? What about the death-row inmates who have been innocent but failed multiple polygraph tests? Should we say they weren't innocent?

I am also amazed at how lightly the left takes accusations of rape. There is good evidence that Gray is a rapist. A blanket defense of him in this patriarchal society in which rape is a very real fact of life is irresponsible. I urge people to read up on the story, and I urge male activists to think long and hard about rape. It's clear that the cops, attorneys and activists involved in this case are too interested in a phallogocentric pursuit of their political goals at the expense of the real issue: RAPE and MURDER. Both the pursuit of the death penalty and the witchhunt against Cummins have been wrong outcomes of this pursuit, and neither does anything to destroy the patriarchal impulse behind rape.